Fierce hotel competition makes customer satisfaction more and more important, which depends on various factors. The development trend of the catering industry, including the interactive technology of professionals and customers in the catering industry, and the way in which the catering industry operates, have all been influenced by technology, which has brought rich opportunities and some challenges. Although the focus on catering services has increased rapidly in the past few years, the number of studies on detailed research on consumer satisfaction is still limited.
This specific study confirmed that fulfillment, service convenience, consumer service, and perceived control have an impact on customer satisfaction in OFD services, which further affects consumers’ behavioral intentions. The research conclusions of this article will help enrich the existing but rather limited research and guide the industry practice in the field of food delivery. Based on the research conclusions, catering companies can improve their services.
OFD platform can improve its products through fulfilment, consumer service and perceived control. Simple process descriptions are suggested to be applied to improve helping customers feel control over orders. In addition, restaurants are advised to provide customer service to customers when they encounter problems when placing orders online. Restaurants can add online customer service online and provide 24-hour online consulting services to help consumers solve problems. In terms of service convenience, restaurants are recommended to use new technologies, such as installing a chat bot in the application ora website, or installing a call button in the application to improve the consumer service of users. In addition, restaurants are advised to take measures to improve customer fulfillment, as this survey confirmed that fulfillment is another important quality for online food ordering companies.
Fulfillment means that customers want to receive what they paid and purchased. The restaurant can improve the details of the delivery, which is considered to be a factor affecting individual orders. In addition, restaurants need to take measures to reduce the mistakes in food re-production caused by geographic distance. Being far away from the restaurant kitchen means that it is difficult to re-make a dish. In addition, they can re-evaluate the distribution channels they currently use to order food online and increase customers by providing OFD. Another contribution of this research is to evaluate the application of e-SELFQUAL scale and electronic self-service OFD service in the catering industry, which has been proven to have high validity and reliability in a new context, and provides a new application Perspective.
There are some limitations in this study. First, the case of this study is China, and the questionnaire survey mainly collects consumers’ evaluations of fast food like McDonald’s and KFC, but Chinese fast food restaurants are missing. This means that research in countries other than China or other types of restaurants may produce different results. Moreover, these research results may be affected by different business norms, social and cultural influences from China. This study did not take the factor of culture into consideration to verify its influence on online food delivery (OFD) in the e-service of Chinese fast food and Western fast food. Secondly, the online questionnaire used in this study cannot cover middle-aged and elderly consumers over 45 years old, because these people rarely use online tools. Therefore, sample limitations also limit the applicability of research conclusions.